BA-X

The German Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit - BA) promotes since january 2007 the labour market index BA-X.

BA-X

The BA has developed a new job barometer that will be published on a monthly basis with immediate effect. The job index of the BA, abbreviated to BA-X, illustrates the development of the demand for manpower on the so-called primary labour market.

The BA-X is the most up-to-date job index in Germany that is based on concrete applications for jobs of the business establishments and not on surveys or assessments.Information on all non-promoted jobs that are known to the BA flow into the index. In addition to the non-promoted jobs that are reported to the BA, these are jobs for freelancers and self-employed, reported jobs from private recruitment agencies, additional jobs from the BA Job Exchange as well as from the BA Job Robot. The BA has knowledge of far more than half of the total job opportunities on the primary labour market in Germany. Hence, the BA has a very broad foundation and provides a representative effigy of the German job market.

Concept

All components for the calculation of the jobs known to the BA have only been available in full since 2004. The BA-X therefore begins at an index level of 100 for the 2004 annual average. The BA-X is seasonally adjusted. Consequently, typical seasonal job stock fluctuations are suppressed. Thus, the BA-X is a real early indicator of the economic situation and benchmark for the actual employment climate in the German business establishments. Accordingly, the BA-X predicted the growth in employment observed since the spring of 2006. In the future, the BA-X will always appear on the day before the monthly press conference.

References

The BA-X on the Internet:

http://www.pub.arbeitsamt.de/hst/services/statistik/000100/html/sonder/index.shtml